Dade: Chapter 1

I was popular in high school for, like, one second. I spent most of my life as an outcast but for one brief and long-awaited tour of being well-liked. And it was all thanks to my friend, Dade. He was handsome and funny and kind, and he liked all the coolest bands and movies. Everyone loved him, and being friends with him made me cool by extension.

It all started in my Sophomore math class, where we just colored worksheets all day and the ancient teacher, Ms. Manem, kept the lights low. Chatter was to be kept to a minimum as though she were suffering from a constant migraine.

I wasn’t good at math, so I tried to take the easiest possible class. I promise I didn’t learn a single thing about math that semester, but I learned a little about myself.

I was lucky enough to have Topics with my friend Harmony. We’d known each other for years and spent every waking moment together when we were younger. But as we grew up, we kind of grew apart. We stayed friends, but she became a beautiful, popular cheerleader who dated the cutest, nicest guys in school, while I became a shadow that slid along the walls of the hallways, avoiding everyone and everything. We relished in our differences, though, because we would always have one thing in common: we were "weird." As kids, we spent hours playing with Legos and baby dolls, making videos of fashion shows or fake infomercials. In seventh grade, we did a project together about the circulatory system and somehow utilized Legos, the concept of Survivor, and her mom’s camcorder. We got a C+.

The desks in Mrs. Manem’s class were clustered together in fours like makeshift tables. It was very elementary school. Harmony and I sat next to each other and across from us were seated two girls who I thought were equally as gorgeous in looks as they were hideous in personality. Jane and Lexi; best friends with matching black and white checkered wrist bands. Having them across from us was like looking into a funhouse mirror… Harmony and I both had long hair that went all the way down to our hips, but mine was golden blonde and hers was chestnut brown. We were both impossibly tan from spending the majority of our time outdoors. Facing us from across the desks, Jane had shoulder-length dark brown hair and Lexi had her dishwater blonde hair chopped super short. While my friend and I were always goofing off, the mean girls were always scowling and serious, unless they were laughing at someone else’s expense.

I was the subject of their torment a lot of the time, but only because I made myself such an easy target. I never fought back, either. I knew too much.

I knew that Lexi was a cutter; I’d seen the scars in the locker room after gym class freshman year. She tried to cover them but wasn’t fast enough. I said nothing, and neither did she. I knew that, even though Jane’s parents were rich and they had a huge house with horses and a pool, her dad was a belligerent alcoholic. My dad was an alcoholic, too, but he wasn’t abusive like Jane’s dad. He just slept a lot.

One day in Topics, Harmony was out sick, so I wore my headphones into class, my portable CD player shoved into the front pocket of my stretched-out hoodie, both hand-me-downs from my brother. Lexi asked me what I was listening to—I didn’t hear her at first and had to pull my headphones down.

“What?” I asked.

Lexi scoffed, rolling her eyes. “What are you listening to?”

I blinked. “Good Charlotte.”

“Fucking Poser,” she laughed.

I pulled my headphones back up as laughter rolled quietly around the room. Lexi plopped into the desk across from me, her nose scrunched up. Jane laughed beside her. They high-fived.

I looked down and kept on coloring in the little squares on the paper in front of me. I had no idea what it really meant, poser, but I could feel my face growing hotter by the instant. I couldn’t even hear the music playing anymore; it was drowned out by the static that filled my brain as I fought the urge to get up and run out of the room. That would be even more embarrassing. I didn’t look up from the desk for the rest of class. I didn’t move a muscle until the bell rang when I sprang to my feet and disappeared through the door.

***

I hadn’t known Dade for very long. He didn’t go to the same school as I did and he had pretty strict parents, so he wasn’t allowed to leave the house very often. We met at a punk show in the city and that’s pretty much the only place I ever saw him, now and then when his parents rewarded him with a bit of freedom. Otherwise, our friendship existed online. The only other person who knew the real Dade was my friend Kelly.

I’d met Kelly the summer before Sophomore year and it was the weirdest, wildest summer I'd had. Kelly was eccentric in a way that felt new and fresh and kind of dangerous. I had never had a friend so outgoing and carefree, so charismatic and seemingly fearless. I was the exact opposite of all of that; afraid of everything, a people pleaser, desperate to find my individuality while fighting to fit in.

It was that summer when Dade came into the picture and the internet was alive with html and blogs and, the newest craze, social media. Xanga was the most popular form of social media at the time. It was a blog where you could post text blurbs as long or as short as you wanted and your friends could leave comments. It was that simple and yet so complicated, because if you wanted to personalize it, change the font color, upload a background picture, whatever, you had to actually code it into the website yourself. We'd spend hours coding colored borders, changing fonts, and adding songs or falling glitter to our own little web pages.

Kelly and I had a lot of fun with Dade that summer. He was like our little secret friend that no one else in the whole world knew about. Until they did.

Jane was the first to ask me about it, on the school bus. I had just sat down and didn’t have time to put my headphones on before she appeared standing over me. My body went hot all over at the thought that she might sit by me. I contemplated sliding out through the open window.

“Hey,” she said, “Who’s the guy you posted?”

I gawked up at her. “What are you talking about?”

“Your Xanga, obviously. The picture you posted? Some guy with black hair and studded wristbands.”

“Oh,” my face fell. “Dade?”

She smiled. I thought of Alice in Wonderland and the fat purple cat that appears grin-first out of nowhere.

“He’s so hot,” she said. “Send me a link to his page.”

“Uh… Okay.”

I never planned on sending her anything. Dade wouldn’t want to meet her. Dade couldn’t have met her if he wanted to; he couldn’t meet anyone.

***

I spent the night at Kelly’s house. I was always spending the night anywhere I possibly could that wasn’t my own house, whether it was Kelly’s or Harmony’s or my older sister’s. But I liked going to Kelly’s house because we always stayed up really late chatting online. We photoshopped pictures and posted on Xanga, scrolled through other people's blogs and commented anonymously, laughing at what we imagined their reactions would be.

“We should,” said Kelly after I’d told her about the exchange on the bus. “We should set Jane up with Dade.”

I cringed. “Why would we do that? We hate Jane.”

“To mess with her.” Kelly’s eyes sparkled; mischief was her middle name.

I never said no to Kelly. I was too afraid of losing her friendship. She was the fizzling wick of a bomb, and I wanted nothing more than to be caught in the explosion, no matter the collateral damage. I just wanted to be connected to someone, to be liked, to feel important. I wanted to feel like my existence meant something to someone.

“How?”

Kelly pointed to her family computer… We sat before the glowing screen as she launched her dial-up modem and double-clicked the icons for AOL Instant Messenger and the web browser. I watched with chaos in my stomach as I realized… all of our passwords were saved; Kelly’s, mine, and Dade’s.

She logged into Dade’s AIM account. His Buddy List appeared on the right-hand side of the screen. Both mine and Kelly’s screen names appeared on the list, gray and translucent; Offline.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” I breathed.

She opened a new chat and typed in Jane’s screen name. In the message box, she wrote, “Hey, it’s Dade, Ocean said you think I’m hot. Send me a pic of u. ;)”

She looked at me, her eyebrows high, waiting for me to give her permission or something. I stared back, mouth open, shaking my head just slightly.

“We can’t,” I said.

“Oh, but we can,” she replied. Her cursor hovered over the SEND button, but her hands were in her lap. “All you have to do is click the mouse.”

“Me?”

“Come on, it’s all in good fun.”

“But, Dade—”

Kelly laughed. “He won’t mind! Jane deserves to get messed with, don’t you think? She's a fucking bully.”

I sighed, staring at the screen. She was right, he wouldn’t care. And Jane was horrible and Dade knew it.

“Send it,” said Kelly.

And I couldn’t say no.

Click.